


Tiny Grass Is Dreaming (Failure To Communicate)

by Elizabeth Culmer (edenfalling)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Beforus, Communication Failure, Gen, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-25
Updated: 2016-07-25
Packaged: 2018-07-26 13:42:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7576120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edenfalling/pseuds/Elizabeth%20Culmer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Something about talking to Damara makes Aranea feel like all her words twist in her mouth and come out as unintelligible nonsense. She <em>hates</em> it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tiny Grass Is Dreaming (Failure To Communicate)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [feralphoenix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/feralphoenix/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Tiny Grass is Dreaming](https://archiveofourown.org/works/576363) by [feralphoenix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/feralphoenix/pseuds/feralphoenix). 



> Translations of Aranea's dialogue are available in hovertext and also in the end notes. (I apologize for any errors, and am open to corrections and suggestions for better phrasing!)

The beautiful thing about books, Aranea likes to say (whether anyone listens or not) is that they let people communicate across otherwise insurmountable barriers of time and space. They tell the stories that shape how people see themselves and organize the world.

The _trouble_ with books is that they aren't just stories: they're also physical objects. And once you read them, you have to put them somewhere. Aranea is lucky enough to have sufficient space and funds to build a small private library in her hive, but she still has to shelve her new acquisitions every few perigees and rearrange all her existing books in the process.

She's halfway through the process when Spidermom drops from the ceiling on a slender thread and rapidly taps a message on the back of Aranea's hand.

Aranea frowns. Why in the world would Damara Megido come visit her?

Damara's hated her by association for at least two sweeps, which is frustrating since Aranea works very hard _not_ to get pulled into any of Meenah's ridiculous feuds, but that means Damara can't have come to gossip or hang out like she did with Rufioh and Meulin. She probably hasn't come for revenge, either, since Aranea also works hard to make it clear that an attack on her won't change Meenah's behavior in the slightest (which is... well, it's functionally true, in the sense that Meenah will always press people to their breaking points until they react to _her_ rather than people around her, which makes roundabout threats worse than pointless). So even if Damara's finally rewritten her internal narrative to 'beleaguered hero confronts the villain' rather than 'innocent victim continues to be victimized,' Aranea shouldn't have any role to play in her story.

Still, she would have befriended Damara ages ago if Damara had let her. There's no reason to turn her away.

Aranea sends Spidermom to let Damara in and climbs her stepladder to deposit her current armful of books onto their new shelf.

A minute later, Damara Megido stomps into the library, flings her hands into the air, and says, "Do something about that goddamn Meenah!"

Oh, for the Empress's sake. Not _this_ again.

Aranea stops halfway through pulling books off the left end of the shelf to make room for the new ones on the right. She sits on the second highest step of her ladder and crosses her arms.

"Wenn ich etwas über Meenah tun könnte, hätte ich so ganz vor langer Zeit getan," she says as Spidermom abseils onto her shoulder. "Ich wünsche, daß Leute aufhören würden zu denken, daß ich irgendeine Art von Einfluß über sie habe, weil es sehr frustrierend ist, immer wieder erklären zu müssen, daß ich _doch nicht tue_."

She projects an echo of her irritation to reinforce her words. Normally that would be the height of rudeness -- empaths are taught, over and over and _over_ , never to do anything that might count as influencing or controlling another troll's autonomy without first getting explicit consent -- but there's something about talking to Damara that makes Aranea feel like all her words twist in her mouth and come out as unintelligible nonsense.

She _hates_ that. She's hated it ever since the first night she met Damara at the local culling center when they weren't quite three sweeps old. The adult caretakers gathered all their charges and said that because of a bad earthquake on the eastern continent, two thousand young trolls were being evacuated and rehived, and one of them was coming here tomorrow. Wasn't that exciting!

Meenah laughed at the obvious emotional manipulation, but Aranea was genuinely excited. Someone new, who didn't already have a story in her head about how Aranea was boring and annoying and talked too much. Someone who'd lived through a real adventure -- because earthquakes were adventures, right? -- instead of the fake adventures Meenah, Mituna, and Latula liked to play at.

Someone she could help, like a proper blueblood was supposed to.

The next night, when Damara and her lusus hunched defensively in the doorway, she stepped forward to introduce herself and welcome a potential new friend: "Hallo, ich heiße Aranea Serket. Wie heißt du?"

Damara's blank-faced lack of comprehension was worse than any deliberate snub.

Aranea lived for words and stories. She hated being ignored, but at least she knew people understood what she was saying; they just decided they didn't want to listen. Damara couldn't even understand, and Aranea could hardly understand Damara's words in turn.

It suddenly occurred to her that there were probably hundreds -- thousands, millions, _billions_ \-- of people in the universe who wouldn't be able to understand her. She could shout at the top of her lungs, she could say the wisest and kindest things anyone had ever thought of, and none of her words would make a single bit of difference.

Aranea burst into tears and ran away.

Meenah mocked her for nights and nights, but that was nothing new. Eventually Aranea got over her shock. She worked to learn Damara's dialect, both spoken and written (and that was a shock all over again, that even books could betray her), but by the time she finally managed to have a real conversation with Damara, Meenah had made sure Damara only saw Aranea as Meenah's friend.

Sometimes Aranea almost hates Meenah for being so very much herself.

Right now, though, she might hate Damara a little bit more, for still failing to understand what Aranea is trying to tell her no matter how hard Aranea tries to be clear. Meenah will never listen to anyone trying to make her be kind on someone else's behalf. Aranea should know. She's tried that often enough. The only way to make Meenah change her mind is to stand up and do it yourself, like Mituna did when Meenah used to make fun of his hair and skateboard. Now Meenah thinks he's kind of cool for a dork and they go on joyrides in her new rocketsled.

"But you're her friend," Damara says, like Aranea's words combined to form gibberish instead of language. "There's no way there's nothing you can do."

Aranea draws a breath to try shouting -- why not! none of her polite methods ever seem to work! -- and then Damara's mouth twists into an overdone leer and she adds, "Oh, and you probably shouldn't sit there unless you switch to longer skirts. I can totally see your underpants. Those frilly red ones really flatter your thighs." Her leer takes on shades of Meenah's I-found-a-weak-point gloat as she points upward.

Sometimes Aranea feels sorry for Damara. Other times, she's sure Damara and Meenah deserve each other.

(This is not the way a blueblood is supposed to feel. She's supposed to be patient, supposed to have compassion for the weaknesses of hemotypes both above and below her on the spectrum. But it's very hard to have compassion when you can see how easy other people's problems are to fix if they would just get up and _do something_ , and instead they keep stewing in the same useless spirals forever.)

"Ich schwöre, du bist genauso schlimm wie sie," Aranea snaps. Then she presses her knees together, places both hands flat on her lap, and gives logic one last try. "Hör doch zu. Du müsst aufhören, andere Menschen zu bitten, Zwischenhändler zu spielen; stattdessen sollst du ihr mal gehörig die Meinung sagen. Das ist das einzige Sache, was sie genug respektieren wird, um dich in Ruhe zu lassen -- wenn sie nicht entscheidet, daß _du_ ihr neue beste Freundin bist." And wouldn't that just serve them both right.  "Auf jede Weise bin ich gar nicht dabei, deine Auspistice zu sein. Freundinnen mit Meenah zu sein, ist doch selbstständig anstrengend genug," she concludes.

Damara's face falls into blankness so fast and thoroughly that her previous expressions might as well have been a mirage. "That's impossible for me," she says, and her emotions might as well be shouting TRUTH.

"Das macht aber keinen Sinn. Wie ist es unmöglich? _Warum?_ " Aranea says, but Damara's already turned to leave and only holds up her middle finger in response.

Aranea sits very still on her stepladder until she hears the distant sound of her hive door slamming shut. Then she presses both her hands over her mouth and screams, the sound muffled by her flesh and absorbed by the thousands of silent books that lined her walls. Spidermom rubs a consoling foot along the rim of her ear.

Somenight she'll have a conversation with Damara in which they're finally on the same page, where they talk to each other instead of past each other. Somenight she'll get Damara to _make sense_. Once she's managed that, fixing all Damara's other problems will be easy. (There is no possible way Damara could be as much of an intractable mess as Meenah.)

But tonight is not that night.

Aranea strokes a finger along Spidermom's abdomen in silent thanks before she returns to her books with a sigh. Shelving, at least, is something under her control.

**Author's Note:**

> **Translations:**
> 
> 1\. "If I could do something about Meenah, I would have done so quite a long time ago. I wish people would stop thinking I have some kind of influence over her, because it's very frustrating having to explain over and over that I _don't_."
> 
> 2\. "Hello, I'm Aranea Serket. What's your name?"
> 
> 3\. "I swear, you are just as bad as she is. Listen. You have to stop asking other people to play go-between; instead, give her a piece of your mind yourself. That's the only thing she'll respect enough to leave you alone -- unless she decides _you're_ her new best friend. Either way, I'm not going to be your auspistice. Being friends with Meenah is stressful enough on its own."
> 
> 4\. "That doesn't make any sense. How is it impossible? _Why?_ "
> 
> (If you are interested, I rambled some more about this remix [here on my journal](http://edenfalling.dreamwidth.org/941529.html).)


End file.
